Lori here from McDowell County in Wild Wonderful West Virginia. Welcome to our crazy life!

Center Stuff:

Thankfully the weather has been relatively cooperative this spring. We got the tiller out and got our large area and the few small areas at the center tilled up, we even added a new spot for some fruit bushes. We deepened the existing raised beds, got the greenhouse full of tomato and pepper plants, and cleaned up some spots along the building for sunflowers.  We will be plowing and tilling the newly acquired section as soon as it dries up enough to not bog down the truck.

 

We even got the wee ones involved.

Lidia working the weasel

Lidia working the weasel

David in the greenhouse

David in the greenhouse

Lidia is using the garden weasel in the sunflower section and David is holding down the gravel and giving us stern looks in the greenhouse.

We have been repurposing lots of discarded items in our endeavor to make life cheaper. We planted strawberry plants in tires, they are doing great. We planted carrots and radishes in a tore apart deep freezer. The radishes are coming along nicely and the carrots are starting to show. Instead of buying a ton and a half of starter pots for our tomato and pepper seeds that outgrew their other starters; we made origami pots out of newspapers to transplant in until it’s time to put them in the ground.

I have been personally cultivating my personal tick detection system. Incase you are not aware of what that is, I will explain. Since I will not wear shorts in the warm weather for safety reasons (my legs are so white that the sun shining on them could caused blindness in others) I can’t see if there are ticks crawling up my legs. What I do is make sure my leg hair is trimmed short enough that I don’t scrape plants as I am walking by and long enough to let me know if there are unwanted critters crawling on me. It worked great last year!

We have planted countless onions already, cabbage, some beans, broccoli, leaf and romaine lettuce, brussel sprouts, okra, and garlic. More things will be planted each day as long as the rain doesn’t get too heavy.

Participants:

Participant Group part 1

Participant Group part 1

We had our first class, and it was great. We had participants and some of their family members attend, there were 22 people all together. There were a few participants that were unable to make this class so we are holding another one for them before the end of the month. There will be 8 more families to attend that one, and I will hold a special one for the group from Southern Highlands. My how we have grown.

Our crew has plowed/tilled for most of the participants and will finish the last two before the class for the next group.

One of our participants already raises goats and chickens so she will help us with out goat related needs. She wanted to be in this program because her and her husband have 9 children and want to be able to provide more of their own food. She says she has a black thumb but a couple of her sons can grow anything.

Another participant has 4 children and has never grown a thing and she wants to learn. Her and her family went on vacation to Florida a few days after the class, one of her sons nearly drowned. He was in the hospital on a vent after being given CPR for 15 to 20 minutes. He is now out of the hospital and expected to make a full recovery. It will be slow and they could use some prayers.

We have been working hard and we believe this is going to be a great season for us. We already accomplished more this year that we did last year at this time.

Our work groups will start arriving soon and we will have Youth Works volunteers again which is great because we will need all the help we can get.

Until next time; Happy Growing!

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